Au contraire, ima sticky it for now.

anyone have a link to this? just curious.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/16...action-659338/

Funny thread. It'd be interesting to see it done if it was a larger %s and seller wasnt a celeb. I think theyd end up being bad for seller cause it'd be way too easy for serious buyers to start colluding and keep price down.

Perhaps the seller can start off at a base markup, exactly what someone said earlier being similar ebay's reserved price. Auctioning does really seem like a good idea if buyers and sellers are willing to go through the extra work.

nice call sir

Another issue that hasn't been talked about in this thread is when a seller originally tries to sell 60% of themselves at a 25% markup and only after the 60% is sold, re opens the thread and offers another 30% to the market. This I believe should be in the rules stating this is not allowed unless the original buyers give the ok. If one of the original buyers says no, then the OP should have the option to open it up but only if he returns the money to the investor that didn't want him selling more action. In general this is an angle shoot and I would never support someone who did this.

This sounds reasonable, but I'd like to hear other's thoughts.

i personally think at the start of the thread the person should tell investors exactly how much they intend on selling. some people make their choices on how much action the horse will be taking/investing in himself.


if someone tells me they are chargin 20% markup, and will have 50% of himself at the end, and then later decides to not invest any money, it kinda changes my outlook on their stake a bit.


that being said, if the person is a friend of mine or really reputable, i really wouldnt care. but in terms of the marketplace, i think its prolly best people make it quite clear how much they intend to sell at the start.


i also understand that money situations can change in the process of selling shares and sometimes the person selling might need to risk a bit less of his money, but it seems this opens investors to being "angled" in some aspects. not a true angleshot, but they werent given the full amount of information required to make a correct decision and in some cases might have even been deceived to believe something is not true just for the sake of the horse selling out a package quicker.


in conclusion, it depends.

I understand how money concerns could change a stakee's position on how much he wants to sell if the tourney is a month away. And that's why he should explain that to the original investors imo. Most would understand if the guy wants to sell an extra 5-10 percent to his personal friends or family.

oh, not sure if this is the correct place to bring this up, but it's pretty tilting when people are selling action to events, and they say

"i am from the UK and if i win big, NO TAXES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


just cause the person you buy a % of doesnt have to pay taxes on winnings, doesnt mean you as an investor are free and clear from paying taxes on your winnings as a backer. that should have no effect on whether the package is a better buy/more +EV or not.

My thoughts...




Things to address. First, ROI. I don't think anyone that doesn't play tournaments realizes how much a large score will skew your results in terms of ROI. To get a better idea of whether or not a certain markup is fair, I suggest looking at what tournaments they've played, what they've won, and also look at some of their deep runs. The outcome of a single hand can literally have a 50% difference in ROI for the lifetime of a player. I think it's funny that some of the people that have posted on this subject [some in this thread, and some in others] would literally be losing players without their 6 figure score, and believe it or not, that one Sunday 2 years ago doesn't indicate any kind of innate supremacy in regards to tournament skill.


I have no issue with people bringing up MU in individual threads, and think it's a good idea, that's really the only way we can continue to operate this free market without any kind of overhead costs. However, I do feel like people should be respectful about it, and I also feel like they should properly do their research beforehand so they have all of their facts straight. There have been several people [who before were otherwise great posters] who have come off as total clowns on some self righteous campaign to "save the people" from the monsters charging a markup.


I also think there is no issue with someone selling enough action to freeroll an event. Let's be honest guys, incase you weren't aware, a MAJORITY of poker players are backed. This indicates a certain level of risk aversion to variance, and personally that's why I sell action, am backed for tournaments online, etc. People seem to be worried about the big WSOP packages, but do you really think anyone with any kind of reputation/integrity/honor would go out there and play purposely bad with other people's money? Let's be completely honest, Vegas sucks, if it wasn't for the poker I'd never go there in my life nor would many others. There is a very high opportuniy cost for spending 6 weeks of your life in a literal hell hole, when you have so many other options available. Not to mention everyone going out there for any amount of time greater than a week, is putting forth a ton of money for transportation, lodging, and overpriced food, even if they are "freerolling" whatever % of their action. Players are putting in a lot more than what is on the surface, while I do agree that this isn't grounds to justify a certain % of markup, I do feel it sends a credible signal to investors that horses take their events seriously and play their best. Horses have nothing but profit in mind when playing tournaments, they literally have no incentive to perform worse than their best. Are you worried that people will play differently because they have nothing at risk? That maybe they'll take an early gamble to make the pool party if they bust out? That's why you select horses carefully, ones who are reputable, have something of value to lose, and are profitable. In addition to risking time and money, horses are also jeopardizing their reputation. There will be hundreds of 2p2ers following people's progress this summer, if they played a hand poorly, I have no doubt that we'll somehow hear about it [2p2ers are everywhere, even when we think they didnt see/hear something, they did] and the negative consequences will be severe. The value of being part of this community is very high, and being ostracized from it would be detrimenal to anybody who takes this game seriously.

I do feel that there should be penalties in form of markup reduction after the fact if horses fail to provide their end of the deal though. That's why I made a clause saying that if I didn't play a minimum numbers of buyins, I would reduce markup by 10%, I noticed Jorj did the same thing in regards to SCOOP. Again, I think clauses like these are great as they provide an insurance to backers, while horses are faced to back up the claims they made to sell their action.


Also, it's pretty laughable that anyone thinks they can even come close to an approximate figure for their EV in buying pieces for MTT packages as a whole. I don't want to single out threatnasty here, but for simplicity's sake I will. I don't know him, but I've played with him enough, and read enough of his posts to know that his expectation is much higher than his ROI. But where exactly does this ROI of 10% or whatever come from? He played several tournaments [none of which he was -EV in] and all of them he had varying levels of EV in. Obviously his ROI is going to be lower in a 320 than a 75, but what do you think his ROI in a 75fo is? I would say it's pretty damn high, if you added up his individual theoretical ROI for each tournament, and added it together, I think you'd see that that amount was greater than the amount he was charging for the package, even if you were to underestimate all of the numbers. This however would require a great amount of time to do. People in general, especially marketplace buyers [since that's what we're talking about here] are very lazy. I wouldn't be shocked to find out that most buyers have literally done zero research. The only times I've seen people raise objections in this forum are when they want to buy a piece of someone, and the price isn't right for them. As someone stated earlier, buyers have no moral qualms about buying pieces of zachvac at 0% markup when he would've instanly sold out charging 20% or possibly even more. Some of the people commenting in this thread, I know have never even bought a % in their life, so perhaps instead of talking about something you know nothing about, perhaps you should take a few hours and breakdown an entire package and estimate ROIs, and see just how good of a deal you're actually getting in some cases. The 2p2 marketplace is full of value, moreso than any other staking platform anywhere probably. The ROI by tournament factor is definitely something people seem to overlook, all the time...


Sellers are the ones setting the price, because they're the ones with the most realistic estimate of their equity, though this is far from perfect. It is this way because buyers just don't care enough to put in the time. You can't just jump into buying pieces and be successful. This is a highly volatile market that is in constant flux. Have you guys ever tried investing money in a forex market without any kind of research? I have, and failed, and I'd say people really underestimate the skill in selecting the right packages [this is pretty damn hard in fact], and instead base it of whatever current trend was set by another person who likely had no clue what they were doing. Poker sellers may be picking high numbers because they think they can get that much [since they saw someone else sell for XX% MU], but then again why wouldn't they want to create the best possible scenario for themself? Are we going to pretend horses aren't self-interested? If a buyer is willing to pay a price, and a seller is willing to accept that price, you have a fair transaction that was made by mutual agreement. So long as the seller isn't purposely misleading anyone, and is open and honest about everything, he will either have a deal, or he won't. If he doesn't perhaps he should charge less and try again.


As far as horses overestimating their edge, what ROI do you think someone who is even just breakeven online in a 1k wsop? a 1500 wsop? the main event? Now what about profitable players. Add the numbers up. Yes there is a lot of variance, but that's what an investment is. If it wasn't for the variance factor, why would anyone be selling action to begin with? Buying action is far from risk free, and probably one of the riskiest forms of investment you can make with your money. If you're uncomfortable with not having a guaraneed return, and paying a premium, then perhaps you should put some money into a 5 year CD. To be honest I think some people are just bitter over this whole thing because they're suck from making some bad investments, while I believe a very small number of people actually care abou the growth/longevity of this forum.

I don't know how much you guys use the marketplace, but not even 2 months ago this forum was completely dead in terms of people buying action.


Sorry if this comes off as condescending, but as someone who buys and sells action in the marketplace, I feel like protecting horses' rights here, since they are the ones always taking the brunt of attacks. If people, specifically buyers want things to change, it's not only the seller's duty to lower their prices. If prices were too high, there would be a be a new equilibrium set, which hasn't happened yet. Probably because nobody knows what that new equilibrium would be.


This is not to say that there aren't good buyers, and that there aren't bad sellers. The system is nowhere near perfect, but definitely requires work on both ends.


That's about all I have to say for now



ok nvm adding one more thing<


in regards to reopening action, i do agree that all of the original sellers should have to be ok with it, and be able to opt out if they dont like the direction somehing is headed in, and from the onset horses should at least give an estimate on what they plan to sell buyers should definitely be protected in that sense, at the same time horses should have a certain amount of flexibility as most packages are sold way in advance, and life changes very quickly for everyone. buyers should be given the benefit in these cases though, except in extreme circumstances, family deaths, illness, etc.

Here is my opinion on the matter. Some of this post is from stuff I have written in other threads:

====================

I think so long as your OP presents all available information in a straight-forward manner (complete with all screen-names, OPR links, tournaments you will be playing, mark-up you are charging, etc) it is fine to ask for w/e you want and leave it up to investors to decide.

People have the right to offer any kind of deal they like to backers and backers have the right to decide for themselves what they want to invest in.

With time, people will find out what works and what doesn't and adjust accordingly. In short - the system works.

eg*:

(i) a seller puts together a tourney package and decides to charge 20% mark-up. He doesn't manage to sell enough shares and is forced to cancel the package. The next time he puts together a tourney package he knows he will need to lower the mark-up in order to sell enough shares.

(ii) a buyer purchases shares from a seller at 20% mark-up each day for some time. If the buyer feels that he is no longer getting good value from his investment in the seller, he will either ask the seller to reduce the mark-up or he will stop buying shares from that seller altogether.#

# this is obviously complicated by the high variance of MTT's, which makes it difficult to know how good of an investment someone is.

* this idealisation does not take into account the fact that some buyers in the Marketplace don't seem to care if they make break-even/bad investments - buying shares more for the sweat/help out a buddy aspect (which is completely okay, although it does complicate the market).

====================

I also think there should be some room for discussion of such deals in the Marketplace.

The obvious argument for allowing this is so that OP's are kept "in line", thus preventing a situation where market-value reaches a price so high that no good-value opportunities are available for investors.

One draw-back of this would be a significant increase in trolling/de-railing of Marketplace threads.

So how much discussion should be allowed? I'm not sure myself... would love to hear some more opinions on this.

I agree, but have no idea where the line can/should be drawn.

Also, great post lipo.

typed something huge up then 2p2 went down. standard.

Lipos post is good. Agree with that.

I think people should be able to post if they think that a post is basically a scam, ie. that guy selling action at 2:1 in the 25k wsop 6max. But posts like mobils one in threatnasty's thread, are not helpful.

I think im gonna stop buying action from those selling quite literally all their action ie. 80% at 1.25, because from what ive seen, they dont play nearly as well as the people who back themselves because they know what they are giving away is a good deal so arent trying to sell it all off.

Backup every day, 4:00-4:15ish PT.

I agree with you Lipo that you cant just look at a sellers ROI on OPR when assessing whether he's a good buy or not. You need to look at his average BI to what he's looking to get staked for, what day of the week it is, whether it's part of a series that a lot of -EV players are gonna sat into etc. I think you can come a lot closer to a "true roi" online than you can live because of larger sample sizes and detailed statistics, but it's still gonna be inexact. There are definitely a lot of players that charge below what they're worth because the fair MU they'd have to charge would be ridiculous. There are also winning players who are selling for the first time that don't charge MU, which is what I did. But at the same time, there are a lot of players who just charge 20% cause that's what everyone else is doing, when they arent worth it. A lot of sellers list all tournaments and the cost of 10% and make you figure out on your own what the MU is, and I'd be wiling to bet a some of the buyers have no idea they're even paying MU, or what it is.

I think opening up those threads for discussion would go a long way to finding a fairer price for each individual seller, but I dont know if that would be practical in all cases. As Tdomeski said, these things are time sensitive and are worthless if not sold out by a certain time. Also, a lot of these sellers have large hourly winrates, and it'd really not be worth their time to spend much time haggling over percentages.

This has probably been said before ITT, but if people are allowed to vouch for people, say "this is a good deal" etc. they should definitely be allowed to say negative things of the same degree.

AFAIK sheets/bax don't have any interest in ROI figures but evaluate their horses understanding of the game in order to evaluate how +EV they are. Obviously taking this approach improves their knowledge, on this forum we have much less to go on, and evaluating each individual horse on solely their OPR is not ideal, however, is still often too profitable to pass up.

This background noise is added to by the jealousy and hero worship present in the MTT community, some people are almost certainly overrated and have overinflated egos, whilst others are happy to fly under the radar and GIQ.

Also I think it would be a good idea if people included in their posts how they intend to pay out in the event of a win and provide an estimated timescale as well as outlining details of how exrate vig, currency fluctuations etc will be handled. The more thorough the OP is the better, it's best to cover all the eventualities (e.g tipping) in order to protect both parties as fully as possible. Someone could probably design a standardised template.

I like to do a bit of due diligence before buying (other than asking for references) such as researching peoples MTT/live/cash records etc, but it's not easy when you know if everything the backer posted in OP is correct the stake will sell out in under 30 minutes and so end up just locking up the action anyway. Under what circumstances is it ok to renege on a reserve? There are lots of times when i'd like to post "reserve 5%" then check up on everything and then back out but in fear of being outcast/losing credibility for reserving shares in the future by THE COMMUNITY (TM) I often just miss a good spot.

One thing that especially peeves me is when someone posts their Stars OPR which is +40% ROI but then leaves out their Full Tilt one which is -23% ROI over a huge sample. There have been a couple of threads like this over the series and was frustrated to see other bigger buyers snap up all the action (perhaps they did check more than just the OP and i'm being naive). I didn't especially want to warn people off the action as I had no particular beef with OPs but i've people a couple of times in the past when i've seen markup is ludicrously high/deceptive for what they're offering.

I agree with Zima that the whole taxes thing is a non-issue, and in fact is often the case that being from the UK is going to cost the backer more money. UK player wins Vegas tourney (great tax free!) converts back to £ (2%+ vig) converts back to USD to send online (2%+ vig)... I had this idea but was too lazy to follow through/even suggest it but now is as good a time as any. A sticky post listing all the possible tax combinations e.g. I'm Canadian and I won €500k in Europe how do taxes work, i'm a backer and my English horse just sent me £6k how do taxes work, i'm American but my backer is English and says he doesn't pay tax how does this work etc etc.

Overall i'd be surprised if a reasonably selective person making what they believe to be good investments couldn't make a good profit (perhaps myself and pofigistka have just been running like god )

Did enjoy this Marty: ""Let's be completely honest, Vegas sucks, if it wasn't for the poker I'd never go there in my life nor would many others. There is a very high opportuniy cost for spending 6 weeks of your life in a literal hell hole, when you have so many other options available."

At least if I punt off all the money on staking I don't have to endure Vegas as well.

my take on a couple other points that have been brought up:

1) I'm not a huge fan of someone (usually a reputable poster) coming into a thread to say how sick the guy is or how great of a deal it is but then not buying a piece. I realize it's important for guys without a bunch of history to have reputable people vouch for him, but commenting on the value of the deal and then not buying a piece just doesn't sit all that right with me. It's not a travesty by any means, and I don't think it's in nearly as bad of form as coming into someone's thread as a reputable poster with no intention to buy and questioning his markup when it isn't outrageous.

2) As Lipo mentioned people selling packages to "freeroll" a bunch of WSOP events shouldn't be looked at in the same light as people selling action to freeroll online events. For one, there is a lot more value at the WSOP for the investors as the tournaments are going to be exponentially softer than any tournament of similar buyin size for the rest of year. Second, as Lipo mentioned, there are tons of extra costs the player will take on to even make it out there. It probably isn't feasible for a lot of guys to spend the $5-10k it takes to live out there for 6 weeks during the WSOP and invest another $20k or w/e into their tournament action. Trust me when I tell you, Vegas isn't cheap.

3) The whole taxes things tilts me to no end. It isn't hard or some complicated system where being from a certain country could possibly add extra value to a package. You get paid out whatever % you buy and deal with taxes on your own. The only exception to this is for something like the WSOP where the Rio will automatically withhold 30% of any cash from people from certain countries (not sure exactly which ones). But, yeah, commenting how your package is a better deal for investors because you are from the UK is pretty hilarious.

4) Re-opening action after you have sold out the amount you wanted to sell in your OP is not something I would ever do. I understand circumstances can change if you sell action for a batch of Sunday tourneys on a Monday and you might want to sell some more come Friday, but I'm not a huge fan of it. I think a much better way to do this is to say in your OP "I am looking to sell 50%, but would possibly sell up to 60% if there is enough interest or plans change". My main issue with this is that certain investors just won't buy pieces of someone who is looking to sell enough to freeroll (which is a more than reasonable approach as a buyer), so it's not really fair for buyers to be locked into pieces when they thought the guy was only selling 50% and then he decides to sell 30% more after he sells out the 50%. Something definitely needs to be implemented to prevent this from happening.

Yes this annoys me a lot. Some solid points there tdomeski

Good post tdom, I thought tax was withheld at source for Americans who cashed in Vegas, hence why being from the UK would be advantageous.

Alarm bells often sound for me when the reputable poster vouching for someone's integrity chooses not to take a piece themselves.

Lately, there seem to be a lot of people selling for a schedule and then posting subsequent events which they are selling for in a second package. This strikes me as quite poor form really, and gives me the impression that the OP thought they didn't want to push their luck the first time, but upon seeing it snapped up at the MU they advertised think they may as well hop on the gravy train and add more. Doesn't seem like cricket to me. Frustratingly enough the original investors are often not given a chance to purchase this subsequent action which is pretty distasteful.